“Honestly?” My uneven breath battles my sobs for control of the conflict zone that is my body.
Aminta and Caresse follow me inside.
“Viola, do you want to go to the office?” Aminta asks, anxious.
That—that concern—is almost as bad as Auntie Ruth’s guilt. There is a reason why I haven’t answered any of her texts. Not for days.
Shaking my head, I race outside into the brilliant sun and sprint toward the parking lot. The stupid blanket drags behind me, but I don’t slow down to bunch it into a ball. A few stragglers are crossing the square for their science labs in the Robinson-Iqbal Building and their free periods in the library. I keep my head down. For a school that touts that every place on campus is a safe space, there’s no place to go.
In the middle of the parking lot, I want to screech into the wind. My car is at home.
Escape. I have to escape. Since Aminta’s concern borders on pity and Auntie Ruth’s guilt is cloying and my parents’ overprotectiveness is one crisis away from martial law, who can I possibly call?
As if my subconscious knows, I hardly even realize who I’m texting until I press SEND. But Josh hadn’t responded to me last night and hasn’t reached out this morning. If I didn’t think I could feel worse, I am wrong. I am such a fool. Why did I keep pursuing the impossible?
Under the library’s overhang, safe from the sun, I am trembling with anger, indignation, shock—name an upset, I’m feeling it. Even if I could find a backup getaway ride now, even if I want to ignore the humiliating video, I have to watch every single frame again. Enough crises have been dissected at my kitchen table for me to know that the longer you ignore a problem, the more aggressively cancerous it will become. So I force myself to hold my phone, surprised that I don’t drop it, I’m shaking that badly.
“Get it together,” I mutter to myself and find the video.
While I’m expecting myself on-screen, I’m startled to see me and just me and so much of me again. Deathly comes to mind. I lift my eyes across the square to the empty running track. I’ve never wanted to be in front of the camera. My safe spot—my sweet spot—is in front of a computer. I’m the researcher, the interviewer, the reporter. I like the backstage, not the podium.
I click PLAY.
It’s as if the cinematographer has choreographed the entire production: the swell of the Firefly theme song, the slowing of the Browncoats as they gather around me, fallen on the ground. Enter Thor, dropping to one knee, ready to hoist me over his shoulder and fly me to safety. I wish he had. Firefighters storm-troop toward us and transfer me to a stretcher. The camera zooms onto my face, an ugly red. My mouth gapes open, and then the thin, unmistakable streak of drool.
Really, whoever posted this couldn’t have cut that millisecond?
Cue: the repeat loop of my painfully red, unconscious face.
Cue: the stretcher.
Cue: the drool.
This is all my fault: These twenty thousand views driven by my fellow obsessed fans, the Browncoats of Firefly.
If only I hadn’t insisted on hosting the bake sale on the opening day of the Firefly exhibit.
If only I hadn’t gone to Africa.
If only Josh would answer an SOS for a girl he just met.
It’s been a full ten minutes since I texted him. In crisis time, that’s an eternity. I shiver, unsure if I’m distraught or cold or remembering how Lee & Li never dwell in If. Instead, we sequester the If with concrete contingencies and clear options. And always, always, always, we have a solid Option B backup plan.
I have nothing.
Then a text pings.
Josh: Almost there.
Two minutes later, a red pickup truck rumbles into the school’s long driveway, then curves around the circle. I step into the sun. My heart lifts at the driver wearing an unfortunate safari hat that matches mine. I have never been so happy to run to If.
I fidget on the passenger seat, the phone uncomfortable beneath me. If I could only smother the memory of Brian’s smirk and the video. At least there’s one indignity I can dismiss: I shove Mom’s ridiculous blanket to the back seat, where it falls on top of Josh’s textbooks, all of them winged with Post-it notes. Josh is putt-putting down the street despite the small fact that we’re in a vehicle designed for off-roading over muck and boulders and riverbeds. Ninety-year-olds in rain-blinding deluges drive faster than us. Slugs on hot asphalt crawl faster than us. This, while I am having my first-ever primal need to comfort eat: Must. Have. Poke.
“Persephone would die of old age before we get there,” I grumble.
“She’s immortal. She doesn’t age,” says Josh. “Or eat.”
“Or wear clothes.”
“Okay, what’s going on?” Josh finally asks as he continues to refine his octogenarian driving skills, which I didn’t fully appreciate driving home from Ada’s. Honestly, he slows a full fifty feet from the traffic light that is still green. Until now, I’ve kept my commentary to myself, grateful that Josh hasn’t pressed me to tell him why I SOS-texted him. Instead, he’s given me space to think, so different from my parents, who would have invaded my privacy, (mis)translating and (micro)managing every particle and nuance of my fear, anxiety, and shame.
“Fainting in front of complete strangers was bad enough,” I say, sounding way too emotional, knowing I should modulate my voice like the best of crisis managers. I can’t. Indignation makes my voice rise. “But did some stupid Firefly fan really have to post a video of it on YouTube for the entire world to see? Did the biggest jerk at school have to show it to everyone? Oh, look, the Sick Girl goes down! You know what? At least when it was happening, I had no idea what I looked like.”
“The video was a total asshole move,” Josh spits out.
I lift my eyes to him, startled. “You saw it?”
Josh nods.
My eyes sting with tears. I didn’t think I could possibly feel any worse. Yet again, my body proves me wrong. I hug my arms around my stomach. Josh saw me drooling. Well, of course, he did. He hovered over me, up close and personal, making sure I didn’t clobber my head on the concrete. My drool probably dripped onto him, a baptism of weird.
“I just didn’t want everyone to know!” I cry, dropping my head to my knees. “I don’t want people to think of me and have that image stuck in their heads.”
He doesn’t deny the horror the way Dad would—“What’s a little faint? Who cares about a little drool?”—or minimize the video the way Mom might—“In the scheme of things, not that many people saw it.” Instead, Josh lays his hand on my back and says, “I’m really sorry.”
“I know this isn’t cancer, and I know I’m lucky not to be dying, but … did I have to become school news?” I bite my lip to stop from crying and draw a shaky breath. “Did I have to totally forget that today was the bake sale and leave everything—everything!—at home?” Oh, no, I am on the brink of ugly crying. I pause to collect myself. In a low voice, I ask, “Did I have to have some weird skin condition for no reason at all? I didn’t do anything but live, and then this happens! And my plan was to go to college in Abu Dhabi! To cover wars and peacemakers and famines and refugee camps and Ebola and the first female fighter pilots.”
“This really and truly sucks,” Josh agrees, his hand moving in slow circles on my back. Slow, mesmerizing circles that gentle my heaving breath. I sniff. Slow, delicious, distracting circles. He says, “I get it. It sucks to have people talk about you. Stare at you. Feel sorry for you.”
“I don’t want to be pitied! Or gossiped about! Oh, Viola, the Sick Girl.” I wail, “I don’t want to be the Sick Girl.”
“Pity is the worst,” he agrees flatly.
“Is that why you came to get me? Because I’m the Sick Girl?” I ask quietly, not daring to lift my head yet, not even if I’ve had a lifetime of coaching to scrutinize body language: Sometimes, involuntary expressions can reveal more than words. “Because you pity me?”
“No.” His hand loses momentum until the
dizzying circles stop. “Because I hated it when people pitied me when my brother died.”
Finally, I straighten. Josh is staring out the windshield, out past the horizon, out into another universe, far, far away. His hand rests flat on my back, dead still.
“I was The Guy Who Killed His Twin. I don’t know how many times I’ve asked myself, What if I didn’t get drunk? What if my girlfriend hadn’t freaked out because I had passed out? What if she hadn’t called Caleb, who was home studying the way I should have been?”
“I’m so sorry,” I tell him, my voice hushed as I think about his brother, the accident, the aftermath. “You must miss him.”
“My parents miss him more.”
“Josh, they’d have missed you, too.”
“I don’t know about that. Life afterward was never the same. Everything Caleb loved, we stopped doing: no more skiing, no more family vacations, no more family. My parents got divorced.” Josh shrugs, no big deal. Like a crisis management pro, he deflects neatly away from the crisis he no longer wants to relive and asks, “Do you pity Persephone?”
The superhero’s clothing choice aggravates me; her exile from her home makes me feel bad for her. But pity?
“No,” I tell him, but my mind keeps wandering back to his accident. Did his parents really blame him?
“How come?” he asks.
“Because even though she’s barely wearing any clothes …” I angle a smirk at him.
He snorts. I smile.
“… she’s strong,” I continue, “and I know she’ll figure something out to save herself and maybe even the world.” It’s true: Persephone is nowhere near weak.
“I rest my case, Ultra. Like I said, we should work together.”
“Do you have a girlfriend? Or a thing for Asian girls?” I blurt, then blush. What the heck was coming out of my mouth? I mean, I think of myself as both Irish and Mongolian, not that that would stop me from being the object of some creeper’s Asian Woman Fetish. But that wasn’t Josh—at least I didn’t think so. Which means: Have I, horrifically, become my mother, interrogating a guy? Or even worse, have I become Auntie Ruth, seeding a minefield with potential issues? Always pointing to the guy, always saying look, it’s him, not me.
“Um, no, she broke up with me a couple of months after the accident.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It wasn’t working. She knew it, and honestly, I did, too. And for the record, aren’t you mixed race?”
I nod. “So?” My eyes narrow. “Do you have a fetish for mixed race girls?”
He smiles. “No. I like strong girls, no race requirement.”
We both go quiet, the uncomfortable kind of silence after you’ve said too much, revealed too fast. I’m relieved to notice that Josh has parked on a side street. Even better, the clouds are clustered into a heavy, gray shield in the sky.
Before the sun can batter its way through that defense, I fling my seat belt off. “Come on. Paradise awaits.”
Josh remains in his seat, eyeing the 45th Street Stop N Shop and Poke Bar with more than a healthy dose of skepticism. Not that I blame him. From the outside, the plain box corner convenience store looks sketchy, the last place you’d expect to find culinary nirvana.
“You have no idea how good this is,” I assure him. In troubling news, though, two more people disappear into the dismal-looking shop. How long was today’s line? “This poke is going to change your life. Let’s go.”
“Poke?”
“You don’t speak Hawaiian sushi?” I ask, genuinely appalled.
“I’ve never had it.”
“But sushi-sushi you have, right?”
“Ummm.”
“Seriously? No coffee. No sushi. No poke. You sure you’re from Seattle?”
“I feel more at home on Planet X.”
“Time for indoctrination, then. So here’s the plan: We’ll grab our poke, then eat it at home where it’s darker.” Specifically, my bedroom, the darkest place at home. “Come on.” Really, my urgency has nothing to do with the high kissability factor of my plan.
Still, Josh lingers in his seat. Honestly, I have never seen a guy move with such sloth-like speed. Did the weight of his formidable muscles slow him down? His face tilts sunward. “Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you.”
“A kiss?” I can’t believe I said those words.
He doesn’t answer, just turns to study me with that half smile of his, the one that dimples his right cheek. His hand may cup my face, but he doesn’t move an inch closer. Instead, he promises, voice low, “I am going to kiss you.” Liar, he only caresses my cheek, a slow trace of his finger down the side of my face, the length of my neck, the outline of my clavicle.
“I like your necklace,” he murmurs, “even though I still think you’ve got River Tam in you.” My breathing speeds as he (finally) leans toward me. He’s right: I feel wild, untethered. His hand wanders to the back of my neck, and his lips hover over mine, making me wait.
“Josh.” His name is a moan low in my throat. I can’t wait a second longer. “Now.”
“Time for indoctrination?” he whispers. Only then do his lips touch mine, moving softly, then more insistently. I sigh. He pulls me closer to him as my lips open, and he tastes me, slower, deeper. “Indoctrinated?”
“Not yet.”
Darn it, I’ve made him laugh, then I laugh, too. The mood changes, but sultry or silly, both are good.
“My turn to be indoctrinated?” he asks, nodding toward the convenience shop.
“You won’t be sorry.”
Josh slowly nods, then—wonder of wonders—he sprints to my side of the car like he can move (when he wants). Clearly, as his hand grazes my lower back and stays there when we dash across the street together, he wants. I do, too.
…
Seven people are ahead of us in line: three construction guys in orange vests. An old couple holding hands. Two yogis carrying matching black-and-gray mats. What catches my attention, though, are the fluorescent lights dangling above us. Every inch of my bared skin is slathered with sunscreen, the rest armored in sun-blocking clothes. There is no way a single UV ray is penetrating me. Even so, I lower the brim of my hat, burrowing deeper into my own private shade.
“I can order if you tell me what you want,” Josh offers again.
“I’m good.” To distract both of us, I say, “I dream about this place.” (And your kiss.)
“How’d you even find out about it?” Josh asks.
Valid question. Shelves of candy bars, Ding Dongs, and potato chips line the aisles, and cigarettes and booze fill the back wall. Above the miniscule kitchen is a chalkboard listing the limited menu: five choices of fish, edamame, avocado, crabmeat, seaweed salad, rice. Finito. That’s it.
“Oh, my gosh! It’s her!” exclaims the slender, thirtysomething Yoga Woman with long hair dyed an indigo purple and tattoos running up and down her ropy arms. Of all the tattooed yoga practitioners (of which there are many) in Seattle, we get the one who’s inked with the spaceship Serenity followed by a jet stream of words: “You can’t take the sky from me.”
Hate to break it to you, Yoga Woman, but yes, in fact, life can.
Yoga Woman now confides to her companion, the equally fit Yoga Man, about the YouTube video, featuring me. (News flash: We can hear your “inside” voice.) I duck my head, entranced by the new scuff on my once-white Adidas sneakers.
“I’ve watched Firefly since I was, like, fifteen.” Yoga Woman then informs me conversationally, “You know, acai, algae, and ginseng could help your skin.”
“Uh, thanks,” I say, looking in her general but not specific direction. Eye contact only encourages further conversation. Yoga Woman, unfortunately, is not so easily deterred.
“Hmmm … you should really get started on the regimen,” she says, frowning prettily. “Like, pronto. You’re starting to get a rash. If you keep getting sunburned, it’s going to age your skin. A lot.”
“Okay,” I say bris
kly, glad for all the press conferences my parents took me to over the last few summers for my “personal edification,” because the ready answer comes to me automatically: “I’ll look into that right away.”
Even so.
Humiliation, as it turns out, comes in infinite gradations of awful. There’s the lifetime mortification of being The Girl Who Drooled. Then there’s the very exquisite shame of having your personal business aired out in front of the one guy you might possibly want to date. Like now: Yoga Woman actually lifts her tattooed fingers (L.O.V.E.) to touch my cheek. Deflect! I pivot to face Josh and ask apropos of nothing, “Do you want to hear what I think Persephone needs to do?”
“So you decided to work with me?” he asks, grinning, even as he angles his body so he blocks me from the Yoga Couple’s view. My view, I would like to state, is appealing: a Seattle Central College T-shirt hugs his wide chest and accentuates the blue of his eyes. He says, “So, partner, give it to me.”
“Editorial consultant,” I correct him.
“Is that so?”
Words, sentences, and coherent thought vanish when Josh leans down to me. I can smell wood chips and smoke on him like he’s been out throwing his hammer in some forest or chopping wood or feeding a fire or whatever it is that a Thor does when he’s not with me.
“I’m curious, potential editorial consultant.” He nudges me. “What should she do?”
“Wear some real clothes.” (Kiss him.) I want his eyes to drop to my (kissable) lips. Mine drop to his.
But instead, my neck itches.
So does my chest, the sliver of bare skin above my lariat.
The problem with an adrenaline cocktail spiked with oxytocin—the love hormone—is this: It has masked my body’s protests against the sun. I fist my hands so that I don’t scratch and scan my body now. My skin stings under my clothes. I can feel welts forming and want to shriek: Seriously? I’ve taken the proper precautions and then some. We’ve been in this poke shop for all of ten minutes. Psychosomatic or not, I can now feel the coil of UV tentacles tightening around me.